Worm and Fish Carving at Marc Adams School

I recently taught 2 classes at Marc Adams School of Woodworking in Indianapolis, Indiana – a 2-day class over the weekend and a 5-day class on European carving. Some students even ventured into taking both classes!

This will pretty much be a photo album of what went on during the class.

Some of you may be familiar with the “donut” exercise as a great way to learn about carving in the right grain direction. Well, as a teacher, I felt I needed a little variety in the lesson, so last week I ventured into the “worm” project and the “fish” project as the very first design for the students to sink the tools into. I let the students design their own – and it was fascinating to see how many varieties of worms and fish there are!

Here are the many varieties of worms

Demonstrating how to carve the “worm”.

A nice shaped worm, just not very happy – or sad.

A happy worm.

A happy worm – and maybe some mischief.

Definitely a happy worm.

This student was a urologist…

And here are the fish…

A contemplative fish.

A ????? fish.

Shark week.

A Whale of a carving!

A nice fish.

A realistic fish.

A torpedo fish.

This is definitely a content and happy fish.

Sort of a smug fish

About ready to eat the worm…

Moody?

And on to more serious carving – but still a lot of fun!

The Marc Adams classroom

The Grape and leaf design – grapes are much more difficult to carve than you think.

A twisting acanthus leaf.

A classic scallop shell.

3 projects completed – fish, grape and leaf design and acanthus

Camellia flower

Hard at work

Showing off completed projects.

Linenfold flag carving.

The finished camellia.

Concentrating so hard.

2 comments on “Worm and Fish Carving at Marc Adams School”

I was one of the students lucky enough to be in this 5 day class at Marc Adams School. While the title of this posting may be “Worm and Fish Carving”, it was so much more than that! I can’t even begin to tell you how great this class was and how much ground we covered on technique and design. We did ancanthus carving, carved a camellia flower, carved a grape and leaf on vine and at the end even crammed in time to go over banner carving and the technique for getting that cool little flip of the ribbon to look real. Mary did an outstanding job of teaching this class and Marc Adams did a great job of hosting it. This class was so worth it. I can’t wait to start incorporating some of these techniques into my furniture making. Thank you!

Hi Carl!
Thanks for your encouraging message! But you have to admit, the end results of the worm and fish were pretty impressive, eh? Especially when for so many in the class, that was the first time they picked up a carving gouge. I always love to teach at Marc’s – the whole atmosphere of the class, environment, and great students is always an incredible experience. Keep up the great carving!